


The Art Of Making An Acquaintance

by flawedamythyst



Series: The Art Of Seduction [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Rape/Non-con References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 05:26:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/630923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How D.I. Lestrade met Sherlock Holmes, Seduction Consultant, and got far more involved than he meant to.</p>
<p>Contains a brief bit of Sherlock/Lestrade because Sherlock can't not have sex with someone, but it is overwhelmingly friendship fic.</p>
<p>Betaed by Mazarin221B, thank you so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art Of Making An Acquaintance

It had been a really shitty week. The case they'd been building against a drug dealer had collapsed when their key witness had been found dead of an overdose, the care home where Greg's mother lived had called to say she'd had another fall and they were going to keep her in a wheelchair from now on, and the café where Greg usually got a doughnut on his way home had been shut for renovations.

He supposed this last wasn't really on a level with the rest of it, but not getting his cheer-up-at-least-there's-doughnuts treat at the end of a week like this one felt like the last straw. He got in, stared at the mess of empty coffee cups and old takeaway boxes in the kitchen for a moment, and then headed for his bedroom. Shower, shave, change of clothes, and he'd see if he had better luck at the Criterion.

Of course, once he got to the Criterion, all he could see was how _young_ everyone was. Christ, he wasn't that old himself, but some of these boys barely looked out of their teens. It was all tight t-shirts and overly-fancy hairstyles, and he felt horribly out of place. He felt as if he should be wearing a sign: Old-Timer, Looking For A Shag.

He got himself a stiff whisky, and then another. What he really wanted on a night like this, he reflected as he looked around at the pulsing crowd, was to be able to get a shag at home. For there to be someone there to greet him when he got in, who would understand how irritating the lack of doughnuts was. He forced the thought from his mind. He barely had enough time to keep his flat clean, let alone to maintain a relationship.

He was on his third whisky and looking around for someone who looked as if they'd be up for a quickie in the toilets when a voice spoke behind him.

“I'll suck you off, if you want.”

Greg spun around, not entirely sure that the words were aimed at him but unwilling to risk losing out if they were. When he got a look at the speaker, who had definitely directed his words at Greg, he felt even more taken aback. The man was young, but not so young that Greg felt like sleaze, good-looking in a skinny and faintly arrogant manner, and wearing a suit that looked far too expensive for a casual hook-up anywhere other than Monaco.

“What?” he asked. He must have misheard. Even in a place like this, people weren't usually that direct.

The man gave an infuriated sigh of exasperation. “I'll suck you off,” he repeated, slowly and carefully, as if Greg was slow. “That's what you're looking for – someone to give you a quick blowjob in the toilets so you can go home feeling a bit better about your life. I'm willing to be that person, in exchange for a bit of data.”

Data? Oh god, was this about some case or other? A reporter looking for a scoop? Reporters didn't usually dress like that, but that didn't mean much, these days. “I'm not at liberty-” he started to say, but was interrupted.

“Not about your work,” said the man. “Dull! I need data on duration and stamina, you need a blowjob – it's fairly simple.” He paused, then added, “I'm a seduction consultant,” as if that explained everything.

“Seduction?” repeated Greg. “Seems more like a business proposal to me.”

The man shrugged. “You'll go for it,” he said. “Why bother wrapping it up with tricks when the simple approach works? Come on.”

He turned and started to head straight for the nearest toilets, apparently completely confident that Greg would follow. For a moment Greg just gaped after him, then he put his drink down and hurriedly followed. He couldn't afford to be picky, after all, and a blowjob was a blowjob.

The man pushed the doors of the toilet cubicles open, apparently looking for something that the fourth one along provided. He grabbed Greg's wrist and pulled him in, then locked the door behind them.

“Open your trousers,” he said, pushing Greg back against the door and then dropping to his knees.

“Christ,” muttered Greg, but he did as asked while the man rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a phone that he set to one side, and a handful of assorted condoms.

Greg's subconscious with familiar enough with what it meant for him to be in the toilets with a man kneeling before him for his body to start reacting in predictable ways. The man examined Greg's half-hard cock intently for a handful of seconds that seemed to stretch on forever, making Greg feel incredibly self-conscious and inexplicably turned on at the same time.

“This one,” decided the man, selecting one of the condoms and then shoving the rest back in his pocket. He tore the packet open, then looked up at Greg. “This is what's going to happen-”

“Christ, are you always this bossy?” interrupted Greg.

The man thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said, then continued where he had left off. “As I said, I am researching duration and stamina. I am going to time you, from the moment my mouth first touches your cock to the moment you orgasm. While I would prefer this experiment to take place under conditions that are as normal for your sexual performance as possible, it has become obvious that having been told I am studying stamina, most men attempt to last as long as possible. In order to make comparisons as accurate as possible, it would be best if you did that as well.”

“Wait a minute,” said Greg. “How many other men have you done this, uh, 'experiment' with?”

“You are the ninth in this series,” said the man. “There were fifteen in the first series – the handjob series.”

Greg felt his mouth drop open. “Jesus Christ,” he said weakly. “What was it you do again?”

The man sighed and rolled his eyes. “I'm a seduction consultant,” he said, enunciating the words as if talking to a small child. Although Greg really hoped he didn't have conversations like this with small children. “When people are at a loss on sexual or seduction matters, I provide them with advice. I have a website,” he added, as if that made all the difference to what Greg quietly thought was the most bollocks job he'd ever heard. “If you google 'Sherlock Holmes', you'll find it.”

Sherlock Holmes. What the hell kind of name was that?

“Now,” said Sherlock impatiently. “Can we please get on? I have more data to gather this evening, you know.”

“You mean, blowjobs to give,” corrected Greg.

“Precisely,” said Sherlock. He took hold of Greg's cock and rolled the condom on in a quick motion that made Greg jolt with the unexpected sensation. “Ready?” he asked, but he didn't wait for a response before starting the stopwatch on his phone and lowering his mouth to Greg's cock.

The next fifteen minutes were indescribable. Sherlock was able to do things with his mouth that Greg had never even dreamed possible. Any attempt he could have made to last as long as possible for Sherlock's experiment was immediately washed away in a wave of arousal, until he could do nothing but clench his fists, screw his eyes shut, and try not to let his knees buckle beneath him.

By the time he came, he had no idea how much time had passed. Sherlock pulled away and hit the stop button on his phone's stopwatch, and Greg just sagged against the door, wondering if he was going to be able to find the coordination to walk out of the toilets, let alone find a taxi to get him home.

“Christ,” he muttered.

Sherlock gave a distracted hum that might have been agreement. Greg looked down at him to see he had pulled out a notebook and was jotting a series of notes.

“You must be roughly 45,” he said, more to himself than to Greg. “Last sexual encounter was at least a month ago. Last period of regular sexual activity?” He looked up at Greg and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

Greg stared at him. “Not sure that's any of your business.”

Sherlock let out an impatient sigh. “I need the data! You agreed to provide it in exchange for a blowjob, remember? Don't be tedious.”

Right. Of course, Sherlock hadn't exactly been open about what data he'd want, but Greg supposed it didn't really matter. “Fine,” he said. “I'm actually 42. Last 'sexual encounter',” he can't help vocalising quote marks around the phrase – who the hell talked like that? - “was probably about five weeks ago.”

Sherlock nodded, scribbling the information down. “And the last time you had regular sexual activity?” he asked. “You've clearly been coping with just the occasional blowjob for a while.”

'Coping'? Christ, he made it sound like Greg was going without some sort of necessity to life. For the first time, he wondered what sort of attitude towards sex you had to have to dedicate this level of research to it.

“Uh, about four years,” he said instead of voicing that, and then had to wince. Had it really been that long since Paul had broken up with him?

“Right,” said Sherlock, writing that down as well, then he put the notebook back in his pocket and stood up. “All done, then.”

Greg suddenly realised he was just standing there with his trousers down and his cock out, and hastily put his clothes back in order. Sherlock made an irritated noise, but waited for him to be decent before reaching past him to flick the lock open.

There were a couple of men in the toilet when they left the cubicle, both of whom gave them knowing looks. Greg wondered if he looked as shagged out as he felt.

“Uh, right,” he said. “Thanks for that, then.”

“You're welcome,” said Sherlock without even glancing at him. He just strode across the room and was gone, back out into the club.

One of the other men raised an amused eyebrow at Greg. “Ain't love wonderful?”

Greg gave him the blackest look he could manage when his body was still thrumming with post-coital bliss, then left to find a taxi. Time to go home and get some sleep before he had to go back to work and try and salvage his case.

****

And that should have been it. He should just have been a blip on Sherlock's radar, a data point he made note of and then moved on from, and Sherlock should just have been a spectacular blowjob and an odd conversation to him. Except that two weeks later, as Greg was driving home, he turned a corner and caught a glimpse of Sherlock in the flash of his headlights.

He was down a dark alleyway, limply leaning on a wall with his head tipped back in a way Greg immediately recognised as inebriated. That wasn't what made Greg swear to himself and pull over, though. It was the man with him, who had one hand locked around Sherlock's wrist and the other on his waist, pulling him deeper into the shadows, and the way Sherlock's hand was pushing weakly at his chest in an unmistakeable gesture of 'go away'.

It had been an extremely long and annoying day. Sometimes it seemed as if they all were, these days. Today's crime scene had been at a laboratory that conducted animal testing, and there had been more than a few protesters there. One of them had seen him arrive, shouted, “Fascist pig!” and then thrown a stone through his windscreen. The fact that she'd been arrested immediately was little consolation for the fact that Greg had had to borrow a squad car to get home while his was getting its windscreen replaced.

And now here was Sherlock, apparently drunk off his tits and needing a rescue.

It took barely four seconds in the alley to realise Sherlock wasn't drunk, he was high. Oh, this just got better and better. He definitely didn't want anything to do with the man who was trying to drag him down the alleyway, though.

“Go 'way,” he was slurring as Greg got close.

“What's going on here, then?” asked Greg in his best Policeman voice.

The man with Sherlock barely spared him a glance. “My mate's had a bit too much,” he said. “I'm just going to take him back to mine, make him comfortable.”

“No,” moaned Sherlock, pushing weakly at the man's grip on him again. “Don't go to other people's places.”

“Doesn't seem as if he wants that,” said Greg.

The man snorted. “Who cares what he wants when he's like this? Come on,” he said to Sherlock. “We'll get you back to mine, and in bed, and you'll feel much better.”

There was a nasty tone to his voice that made Greg immediately suspicious. “Friend of yours, is he?”

“Don' have friends,” said Sherlock, and he lifted his hand and flopped it at the man again.

“He doesn't know what he's saying,” said the man.

That was almost certainly true, but that didn't mean he didn't mean it. Greg rubbed at his eyes. “Tell you what, why don't we take him back to his place instead?”

The man finally turned away from Sherlock long enough to scowl at him. “What the fuck business of yours is it? Piss off, I can handle him.”

Greg pulled out his badge. “D.I. Lestrade,” he said. “Keeping people safe is always my business.”

The man blanched in a very satisfactory manner. “Shit,” he muttered, then he looked back at Sherlock. “Fine, fine. You look after him.” He pulled Sherlock off the wall and pushed him at Greg, then took off down the alley.

Sherlock fell bonelessly against Greg, apparently completely unable to hold himself up. Greg fumbled to catch him and to keep them both upright, eventually ending up with a very sweaty and limp Sherlock cradled in his arms. Fantastic.

Sherlock squinted at his face for a long moment, then his eyebrows raised. “You!” he said. “I've had you.”

“Yes,” said Greg. “Well remembered. Come on, I'll take you home.”

“No!” protested Sherlock, and he pulled away from Greg, then wobbled and fell back to rest against the wall again. “No, no, no, no, no, no...”

Greg interrupted what was starting to be a long chant. “Not my home, yours,” he said. “What's your address?”

Sherlock shook his head. “No, no,” he said, then mercifully found other words in his vocabulary. “Already had you. Don' do seconds.”

Oh, good grief. Was there room in his brain for anything other than sex? “And I don't do drug addicts,” said Greg. “I'm just going to take you home so you can recover. No funny business, I promise.”

That didn't seem to get across to Sherlock. “No,” he said again. “No, no, it's fine. I'll jus'...Need to go back to club. Need to find a new man.”

“That's the last thing you need,” said Greg. “Look, give me your address, I'll drive you home. Just that. I won't even come in if you don't want me to, I'll just drop you at the door.”

“No,” said Sherlock. “I'll be fine. Go 'way.” He pushed away from the wall and staggered a few steps towards the end of the alley before swaying and needing to lean a hand against it.

Greg wished he was the type of person who could just walk away and leave him to it. “Come on, you're not going anywhere tonight except home. Tell me your address.”

“No,” said Sherlock. “Had you, need new data.” He reached the end of the alley and paused, clearly not sure where he was going, or how he was going to get there without the support of the wall.

“I can't let you wander off to get into even worse trouble,” said Greg. “Either you give me your address, or I'll have to take you to the nearest police station. You really don't want to spend the night there.”

Sherlock shook his head violently. “Piss off,” he said. “I'm fine.”

It was more than clear he wasn't fine. Greg really didn't want to take him to a police station, though. All the paperwork and hassle was just not what he wanted for his evening, not to mention that Sherlock would be bound to mention that he'd 'had' Greg, which would be embarrassing at best and end with awkward questions at worst.

“What's your address?” he asked again. Sherlock shook his head, and then took a step out onto the pavement, holding both hands out for balance as he left the wall behind.

Right, time for a proper intervention. Greg stepped up to Sherlock and patted down his pockets as quickly as he could, ignoring Sherlock's vague attempts to swat him away. He found Sherlock's wallet and pulled it out.

“Give it back,” said Sherlock. “Tha's mine! Thief!”

“Hang on, you'll get it back,” said Greg. He went through it quickly, looking for an address, but there was nothing. Sherlock had rather a lot more money than Greg would have expected, several credit cards, a couple of which were in the name of 'Mycroft Holmes', a handful of business cards with the address of his website, and nothing else. No driving license, and nothing else with an address either. Who the hell didn't have a driving license these days?

Sherlock's hands patted at his chest, then he grabbed for the wallet. Greg let him take it, then had to steady him when the motion put him off balance.

“Looks like you're going to have to give me your address yourself, mate,” he said.

Sherlock scowled. “No!” he said. Greg was really beginning to hate that word. “Had you! Go 'way!”

Greg grabbed his chin and held his face steady. “Come on, Sherlock,” he said. “Concentrate! I am not interested in sex with you. I just want your address so I can get you off the streets.”

It didn't work. Sherlock just pushed at him, listed to the left, and then mumbled some more denials. Greg gave up.

“Right, we'll have to wait till you've sobered up then,” he said. He took a firm grip on Sherlock's waist and all but dragged him in the direction of his car.

Sherlock protested and tried to resist, but his uncoordinated attempts to get away were pitifully easy to block. Christ, no wonder that bloke had thought he'd be able to get him back to his place without much trouble.

Greg yanked open the back door of the car, pushed Sherlock inside, then slammed it behind him. It took Sherlock nearly five minutes of scrabbling at the door to realise it wasn't going to open for him, during which time Greg sat in the front seat and wondered what the hell he was thinking. He really should just take Sherlock to the nearest station and let them deal with him.

He didn't, though. He sat in the car while Sherlock threw a tantrum, watching him try to get out of somewhere that was specifically designed to keep people in. He asked him several more times for his address but was ignored, even after Sherlock had settled down into a sulk.

An hour later, they were both still there. Sherlock was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling and twitching his fingers against his stomach.

“Want to give me your address now?” asked Greg wearily.

Sherlock's head turned towards him very, very slowly. There was silence as he stared for a long moment, apparently considering. “You don't want to fuck me,” he said eventually.

“No,” agreed Greg. “I just want to get you home so I can get rid of you.”

There was another long silence. Sherlock kept looking at him, then blinked and refocussed on the back of the seat.

“What's your address?” tried Greg again when it became clear he'd lost his train of thought.

“74D Montague Street,” said Sherlock in a dreamy voice, then he blinked and frowned. “I wasn't going to say that.”

“Too late,” said Greg. “Sit up, put a seatbelt on.” He turned the key in the ignition.

Sherlock made it upright after three attempts, but didn't even bother reaching for the seatbelt. At this stage, Greg really couldn't be bothered to press the matter. Yes, okay, he'd get into loads of trouble if anyone found out, but he'd had just about enough of this crap now. 

He drove to Montague Street as carefully as he could, then parked outside number 74, ignoring the double yellow lines.

“Here we are,” he said.

Sherlock looked out the window. “I live here,” he said, sounding surprised.

Greg gritted his teeth and got out of the car. He pulled open the back door and Sherlock clambered out as quickly as he could, then looked back at the car and kicked it. “Never getting in one of those again,” he said.

“Probably quite a few things you did tonight that you shouldn't do again,” said Greg.

Sherlock scowled. “Oh, here comes the speech,” he said in a tone that meant he'd already had several people try and point out the idiocy of drug use.

“Not a speech,” said Greg, because he'd been a copper long enough to know when one wouldn't work. “Just saying. You nearly got raped tonight – do you realise that? If I hadn't come along, that man would have got you back to his place and done god knows what to you. Are you really sure that your lifestyle is worth that kind of risk?”

Sherlock frowned and it almost looked as if he was actually thinking that over, then he started to drift to the left again and Greg had to steady him. “Where are your keys?” he asked with a sigh.

Sherlock handed them over without any protest, apparently just as aware as Greg that there was no way he was in any state to try and fit them into the locks of his front door.

Once inside, he stumbled two steps then collapsed onto an ancient-looking sofa. The whole flat was a mess, with clutter spread everywhere. It took Greg a moment to realise that the vast majority of it was sex-related.

“Is there anyone I can call for you?” he asked.

“No,” muttered Sherlock into the cushions. “Go away. Your good deed is done. Leave me alone.”

Greg did. He couldn't be bothered with anything more, and the last thing he wanted was to get dragged into the mess that Sherlock's life seemed to be. He went home, made himself beans on toast, then fell into bed and tried not to worry that Sherlock would die overnight.

****

It was another six weeks before Greg saw Sherlock again, which was long enough to have mostly forgotten about him. He was in Angelo's, leaning against the bar with a pint and wondering if the man in the corner who was wearing a waistcoat would be interested in a quick liaison. He wasn't particularly good-looking, but Greg was willing to forgive a lot for the sake of a waistcoat.

“He's seeing the man in the yellow shirt,” said a voice and he turned to see that Sherlock had settled himself against the bar next to him. “Although he's thinking of breaking up with him, so you might still be able to get some sex out of him. I can give you advice on the best way to do that, if you want.”

Greg managed to find his voice through the surprise of Sherlock's appearance and apparent desire to have a conversation. “No thanks,” he said. “I don't do infidelity, not even for the sake of a waistcoat like that.”

Sherlock frowned. “Waistcoats?” he said. “Really?” He looked back at the man, tipped his head to one side, then shook his head. “The most annoying man I know insists on wearing waistcoats. Pointless things.”

“Is he fit?” asked Greg, almost by reflex. He could forgive quite a high level of annoying for the sake of waistcoats. Sherlock screwed his face up with utter disgust, and Greg couldn't hold in a laugh. “All right, then,” he said. “What is it?”

“What's what?” asked Sherlock.

Greg raised an eyebrow. “Well, I'm not actually in need of a Sex Consultant-”

“ _Seduction Consultant_.”

“- or whatever,” he said, ignoring the correction, “and you made it very clear last time that you don't do second times, so what do you want?”

“Why do I have to want something?” asked Sherlock. “Maybe I'm just engaging in a friendly chat, as is common within pub culture.”

Greg didn't deign that with a response. This might be only the third time he'd met Sherlock, but he could already tell the bloke wasn't the 'friendly chat' type.

Sherlock let out a long sigh. “People tend to view men who frequent pubs and clubs alone with some suspicion, particularly when they have been around long enough to become familiar. That kind of suspicion hinders my experiments.”

Greg spent some time translating that. “You want a friend so you don't look like a weirdo loner?” he asked.

Sherlock scowled. “Not a _friend_ ,” he said, as if such a thing was distasteful. “I don't have friends. Just an acquaintance will be fine.”

“Right,” said Greg. “Well, I'm afraid I can't really afford to 'acquaint' myself with a drug addict, not with my job.”

“Not a problem anymore,” said Sherlock. “I'm clean.” Greg had heard that one often enough to give Sherlock a sceptical look. “I am!” insisted Sherlock. “I haven't taken anything since the last time I saw you.”

Greg allowed his sceptical look to deepen. Sherlock huffed. “It became clear that it was putting my work in danger.”

“Oh, right, that was the problem,” said Greg. “Not that you were nearly dragged back to some bloke's place to be raped.”

“That was also a problem,” acknowledged Sherlock. “Such an experience would have provided no relevant data at all, and been terribly inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient,” repeated Greg incredulously. Who the hell described rape as 'inconvenient'?

“Yes,” said Sherlock, apparently not seeing what was wrong with that. “At any rate, I will not be using again, which puts aside that objection. I don't think you can have any others – you only rarely have companions with you when you come out so I won't be displacing anyone's position, and I will be able to give you advice on which men you are likely to score success with for your bathroom quickies. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

Greg thought about it for a long time, trying to come up with a reason that Sherlock might accept, and failing miserably. Well, at the least, he'd be bound to get some good stories out of hanging around someone like Sherlock. “All right,” he said finally. “But if I catch you on drugs again-”

“You won't,” said Sherlock. He gave a brief smile, the turned to survey the room. “Tonight, I'm looking for a man with whom to re-enact a porn film I watched earlier. He needs to be roughly six foot two, have enough hair to grab on to, at least one piercing, and enjoy spanking.”

Greg nearly choked on his pint. “How the hell can you tell if a man enjoys spanking just by looking at him?”

He regretted the question almost immediately when Sherlock's face lit up and he launched into a monologue that went on for nearly ten minutes on all the different signs that a man liked one kink or another. Good god, this 'acquaintance' was going to be hell.


End file.
